egged devils

i've been playing with eggs! i had several fun goals in mind when i started this project.... i wanted to 1) experiment with using beet juice to dye eggs 2) make deviled eggs because i had a sudden craving for them, and 3) experiment with powdering egg shells to make a white pigment - which i hope to use to try to precipitate some beet dye onto later, experimenting w/ making a beet lake pigment. i haven't seen any evidence that #3 is either possible or advisable - so it's a total experiment that might not even work. we'll see.... but i have photo evidence of #1 & #2 below! :)

i hard boiled about a dozen eggs... some of them are shown below. for about half of them, i cracked the shell after hard boiling, but didn't peel it immediately. i dunked them in beet juice first, which left the marbled pattern on some of them. the ones that are solid magenta are the ones i peeled first, then dipped in beet juice. each egg was in the dye for less than a minute, and i still got a pretty nice color. the color did change over time though. within about an hour, the color visibly absorbed through the egg white (which isn't visible in the 2nd photo, because i took it as soon as the deviled eggs were done), and the color itself changed from magenta to lavender. much less pink, much more purple. weird, and i don't know why - but definitely cool! (i think Harvey is right - i'm quite the color scientist lately... i also like Marilee's term alchemist. that's just plain fun!)

Here's the finished deviled eggs. you can sort of see a hint of the magenta on the outside edge of the egg white in these photos. within an hour, the color had seeped through the entire egg white, and was then visible right up next to the filling! it had also shifted from magenta to lavender by that time! (quite tasty too! - and no, Kim - mine didn't taste like beets at all!)